


ghosts of guilt (bodies of grief)

by Naladot



Category: GOT7
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Dark, Friendship, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-13
Updated: 2016-03-13
Packaged: 2018-05-26 08:57:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6232414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/Naladot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Jaebum grasped Jinyoung’s shoulders so hard Jinyoung winced. "Everyone dies in that arena," Jaebum told him. “You’re never the same. You’ll never forget what happened. Just because you walk out of the arena, doesn’t mean you walk out alive.”</i> Jaebum survived the 35th Hunger Games only to see his best friend become a tribute in the 37th.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ghosts of guilt (bodies of grief)

**Author's Note:**

> A bunch of things accidentally coincided for me to end up writing this fic: a prompt from my friend for this Hunger Games AU, watching _Children of Men_ and reading _Station Eleven_ in the same week, and a deep need to write something dramatic and angsty. It probably lives up to none of the expectations set by these, but man, if JJ Project isn't a good ship for angst.

A mythos surrounded Im Jaebum in District 7: they said that if you were very quiet in the dead of night, you could hear his screams reverberating from the Victor’s Village miles and miles away. Children shied away from him on the street, women and men alike approached him cautiously, and since he won the 35th Hunger Games two years ago, he had scarcely shown his face in the town where he was raised.

The Victor’s Village sat in a grove of trimmed, cultivated trees, pines allowed to grow strong to celebrate the victory of the people living within its embrace. Three rows of houses stood in perfect lines; only four of these houses were inhabited. Im Jaebum lived in the house furthest away from the others. None of the victors were inclined to neighborly chitchats, but Jaebum was the most solitary of them all. He didn’t care. He had no interest in talking to anyone.

With one exception.

Jinyoung unlocked the door of the house at the same moment that Jaebum shattered a bottle of alcohol through one of the ornate mirrors an admirer in the Capitol had sent to him, the note attached declaring her love in a scrawling and repulsive script. Jaebum’s chest heaved as he looked from the liquor dripping down the broken glass, to the shattered remains of the bottle scattered across the hardwood floor, to Jinyoung’s face.

“I brought dinner,” Jinyoung said, almost pleasantly, holding up a basket. “My mom says you’re getting skinny.”

It took Jaebum a minute to piece together the shards of Jinyoung’s statement—dinner, Jinyoung’s mother, and skinny all appearing to him as individual and unrelated elements, too separate to form a connection between them. He couldn’t remember the last time he saw Jinyoung’s mother, and the reminder of her existence felt like a new and odd revelation. He looked up at Jinyoung again, searching his eyes for an explanation.

Jinyoung clapped a hand over his shoulder and pushed him toward the kitchen. “Let’s eat.”

As they walked down the hall, Jaebum kicked aside the boxes of clothing sent to him by his Capitol escort—with the admonition _try not to look like an unbathed drunk at the Reaping_ attached—and what remained of an end table after he’d taken an axe to it a few nights ago. End tables were pointless, anyway. Excess decorations for excess houses for excess people.

Jinyoung pushed him into a chair in the kitchen and set about putting the food on plates. “Sungjin said he came to see you last week,” he said, like that was a normal thing to start a conversation with. “He said you were a little rude, which from Sungjin, I took to mean that you were a total asshole.”

Jaebum rubbed his palm across his face. There were things he accepted only from Jinyoung: honesty was one of them. He felt his skin crawl uncomfortably, anyway, and pictured Sungjin’s earnest face when he walked up to Jaebum’s door. It was his smile, his hope, that had caused Jaebum to shut the door in his face. He could only disappoint Sungjin, and disappointment was a best-case scenario.

“I didn’t have anything to say to him.”

“You never have anything to say to anyone.”

“I talk to you.”

“Yeah, because it’s healthy to only ever talk to one person.” Jinyoung gave him the look that he always gave when their conversation reached this point—serious, but with a hint of indulgence.

Jaebum ran a finger along the edge of the table. It was a perfect right angle, machine-made, the wood crafted in one of the factories in the southern towns of District 7 before ending up back here. He would have preferred to make the furniture himself, but he couldn’t focus long enough at the task, and he’d never been as good as his parents at that, anyway.

“It’s—difficult,” he said finally, avoiding Jinyoung’s eyes. He kept his gaze trained on the table as the plates came into view, gold-trimmed china he hated. Jinyoung sat heavily into the chair across from him and dipped his head into Jaebum’s line of vision, his eyes crinkled at the edges by his smile.

“I hadn’t noticed.” Jinyoung leaned back in his chair and clapped his hands together. “Anyway, I’m starving, and if you can’t talk, I will. I got a book this week—”

“Another one?” Jaebum interjected. He stabbed his fork into the stewed venison and briefly noted that one of Jinyoung’s sisters had to be responsible for the food on the table, because Jinyoung had terrible aim himself. But he couldn’t dwell on that, because Jinyoung getting books was idiotic.

“I’m _careful_ , okay? I promise. It’s just, that whole building is just sitting there, untouched—”

“In the middle of a bunch of ruins that are probably radioactive or booby trapped—”

“Except they’re _not_. It takes me a while to make sense of everything but—I mean, come on, don’t you want to know what life was like before all this?”

Jaebum looked around the ornate wood carvings of his kitchen, the fake stuffed deer head hanging from the wall and the grimy glass window looking out on the hill below. In the distance glowed the warm light of the town where he was raised, one of a handful out here in the wilderness of District 7, deceptively inviting and safe. He thought about how he’d come to live in this house, about the history they were taught in school from Capitol textbooks decrying the districts’ betrayal and lauding the Hunger Games, about how those games would march on indefinitely, an unending avalanche. He looked up at Jinyoung.

“No, I don’t.”

For the rest of the evening, he refused to speak. Even to Jinyoung.

 

* * *

 

 

The morning of the Reaping, Jaebum put on a pair of old pants and a flannel shirt and his father’s old work jacket and looked at himself in one of the mirrors he hadn’t broken. His clothes were clean and didn’t look anything like Capitol fashion, so he was satisfied. His hair had grown long and unkempt and he tried to think back to the last time he’d been into town for something like a haircut or basic supplies, but he couldn’t remember. It didn’t matter. In a day’s time he’d be back in the bowels of Hell.

Jaebum stuffed a few things into a bag, slung it over his shoulder, and went outside. He didn’t bother locking the door—he didn’t care if thieves looted the whole place. The air that morning was crisp and cold, painfully clear. The Reaping brought with it a poignant and miserable sense of clarity: it was the one time of year that Jaebum knew what he was supposed to do, even if his hatred for the games pulsed in his blood. Last year, the District 7 tributes died early, and Jaebum came home and drank himself into oblivion. Jinyoung was the one who found him passed out in the yard outside his house, and scolded him for drinking himself to death. Jaebum remembered that he’d laughed for a long time, laughed right in Jinyoung’s appalled and silent face.

Today, he found Jinyoung on the edge of the Victor’s Village, hands in his pockets as he overlooked the wide field that separated them from the dense, endless forest. There were no fences on this northern edge of District 7. Anyone who dared to run would die within days. Even if you knew the forest and could hunt and care for yourself, the forest was haunted. Jaebum and Jinyoung had gotten lost in there once, for three weeks, and everyone gave them up for dead before they made it back. Even that kind of death would have been a better fate than the Hunger Games.

“Ready?” Jinyoung asked. Jaebum nodded once and they set out across the field.

It was their tradition, ever since they’d gotten lost in the woods at thirteen years old, to go into the forest on the morning of the Reaping. There was a pile of ruins close to the forest edge that they were fairly superstitious about, since it was the first thing that alerted them they were finally close to home. Not that any of their superstitions had kept Jaebum from being reaped, but they couldn’t risk _not_ going through with their rituals. It was a District 7 peculiarity, Jaebum had learned, to be obscenely superstitious.

At the ruins, they went through their usual rituals—spitting on the metal structure in the middle, rubbing the stones in the northwest corner three times each with their right hands, killing a rabbit and leaving the carcass for any roving hungry spirits. This ritual complete, they then wordlessly turned and headed farther into the forest, until they finally emerged from the forest on the edge of a large stream. A tree had fallen across it, and Jinyoung walked out first, then Jaebum, and they sat themselves with their feet dangling just above the quiet flow of the water. In front of them, the familiar face of the nearest mountain rose in the distance. Snow blanketed its peak and thick expanses of trees covered the hillsides surrounding it. It was almost peaceful.

“Now that Mark is nineteen,” Jinyoung said, his voice almost lost in the daunting, infinite quiet, “That’s one less to worry about. Next year, I’ll be aged out. Youngjae and Yugyeom will be nineteen in the blink of an eye, and then you’re coming back to live with us. You promised, you know.”

Jaebum took a deep gulp of crisp mountain air. “I said I’d be holding my breath until Yugyeom was officially an adult.”

“Ah, well,” Jinyoung said pleasantly. “Same thing.”

It wasn’t really, but Jaebum wasn’t going to bother with it. All of Jinyoung’s sisters were older than him. They’d be holding their breath this year, praying to every spirit in the forest and whatever gods existed in the other districts that Jinyoung would make it just one more year, just one more year that someone else’s brother got picked instead of theirs. Jaebum had no family anymore, but Jinyoung was as good as he’d ever get, and he secretly wished the same. Just one more year. Someone else’s brother.

Jaebum looked at the face of the mountain and the clear blue sky. “This is a shitty way to live.” He looked over at Jinyoung. “Do your books say anything about that?”

Jinyoung was very quiet and still for a long moment. “My books say that people have been awful for a very long time.” He looked over at Jaebum with dark, piercing eyes. “But they also say that there’s always people who are good.”

 

* * *

 

 

In grade school, Jaebum and Jinyoung despised each other. Jaebum thought Jinyoung was a stuck-up prick who brownnosed his way into the teachers’ favor and taunted the rest of them with his intelligence. Jinyoung, as Jaebum learned later, thought that Jaebum was _also_ a brownnoser, except with the older boys at school, and he hated how Jaebum got into fights and teased the other kids just to make himself seem cool. They maintained their rivalry until they were thirteen and began splitting the seasons between school and the lumber yards, and their fighting got them lost in the woods. Three weeks they relied on each other to stay alive. After that, they were never apart. Their rivalry buried, they relied on each other for everything just as they’d relied on each other when they were lost in the forest.

Then, on Jaebum’s sixteenth birthday, the whole population came together in the plaza of the central town in District 7. Jaebum stood in the square and looked up at the tall Justice Building, in front of which a man with blue hair stood and read out the names: A girl from a town in the south of District 7. And Jaebum Im.

Jaebum walked up to the podium in a daze. It wasn’t until later, when he watched the television broadcasts, that he saw his friends all stare at him in horror. On the television screen he watched Jinyoung move forward, and Sungjin hold him back.

After that, all of Jaebum’s memories were haunted.

 

* * *

 

 

Jaebum and Jinyoung made it back into town just in time to hop onto the last car of the open-aired train that would take them to the central town of District 7. The trains were mostly used for transporting lumber from the expansive lumber yards in the north of the district, to the central towns where it was processed and crafted and sent out. But once a year, its primary function was to transport people. Jaebum stood at the edge of the crowded car, looking over the railing at the tracks as the train began to pick up speed.

“Aren’t you supposed to be up front?” someone asked. Jaebum turned to see Youngjae with a thumb pointed over his shoulder, at the engine in the distance. Jaebum just shrugged.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Just as long as I show up for the cameras, no one really cares what I do.”

Jaebum suddenly couldn’t stand to look at Youngjae’s concerned face, or, behind him, the twin confused expressions of Mark and Yugyeom. He turned around again, more comforted by the trees hiding the sky than the goodwill of his friends. He felt a hand clap over his shoulder and knew, instinctively, that it was Jinyoung’s. All around him he could hear the voices of children, kids too young to understand where they were headed and excited about the yearly train ride. Everyone else was quiet. Jaebum focused on trying not to retch.

The train carved its way through the forests, which grew steadily thinner. On several occasions the train would careen over a bridge built over an impossibly large canyon, and below them Jaebum could make out the waters of a winding river. His father told him once that District 7 might have survived the rebellion if they could have made it past the canyons and escaped into the forest beyond, but the Capitol bombed out their bridges early on in the war. That was all he ever said about the rebellion, one off-handed comment when Jaebum was ten years old.

All too soon, the train pulled into the central station and Jaebum spotted a small group of Peacekeepers waiting to usher him to his proper place in front of the cameras. He glanced, once, at Jinyoung, who had lost his chipper expression and now stared with hard eyes at the mass of people pouring off the train and into the station. Without a word, Jaebum leapt off the car and made his way to the Peacekeepers.

“Thought you might have run away.”

Yeeun Park glared at him as he approached. Jaebum grinned sheepishly and tried to pretend like he wasn’t intimidated by her. Out of the four victors from District 7, they were the only two able to serve as mentors. The oldest victor had lost both hearing and vision during the games. The other one was haunted, and spent most of his time talking to people no one else could see.

“Thought about it,” Jaebum said with a shrug. They fell into step beside each other, flanked by silent Peacekeepers. “But then I thought about how sad all my adoring fans would be if I didn’t show up.”

Yeeun snorted and he thought he saw a hint of a smile on her lips. This was the most progress he’d made at getting her to like him, and he felt a vague sense of accomplishment, oddly placed as they made their way through the crowded city streets to the worst event of the year.

His heart began to race as the Justice Building came into view. He could just make out the tall figure of District 7’s escort, Otho Grenache, dressed in some bright blue monstrosity that was impossible to miss even from a distance. Jaebum felt dizzy and sick, and he didn’t dare look for his friends assembled in the crowd around the plaza.

He was only somewhat aware of Otho giving his speech about the glorious approach of the 37th Hunger Games. He heard Yeeun’s name announced, and then his own, and he took his place on the stage with a practiced and painful smile stretched across his face. He caught a glimpse of his own face projected on one of the screens high above the plaza, and felt even more queasy. More speeches were given. Otho spun one of the giant glass balls full of names and Jaebum tried to calculate how many times Jinyoung’s name would be in the other one, but he couldn’t remember.

“Dahyun Kim,” Otho called out, in the high falsetto he used for broadcasts. Jaebum’s heart sank as a trembling girl walked up to the podium. She looked no more than fourteen, pretty, and utterly terrified.

Otho said more things to the camera and Jaebum just watched the poor girl take her place in front of the masses. He wanted to go into a rage, rescue the girl and run away, but there was no chance to do anything. They would both pay, and so would her family, and all of District 7, if he dared to act out in any way. Jaebum had suffered as much as he thought a human being could, but he refused to cause others more suffering for one moment of delusional rebellion.

Otho spun the other ball and pulled out another name. He looked up into the cameras, his gaze triumphant and winsome. “Jinyoung Park,” he announced, and Jaebum’s pounding heart came to a halt.

 

* * *

 

 

Jaebum did not remember walking to the back of the Justice Building and collapsing in a chair in a dust-laden, unused room. He simply discovered himself there: the sunlight pouring through the window, illuminating particles of floating dust, casting a warm square across the dark polished floors. He realized he was in a library of sorts, and he laughed at the irony, because Jinyoung would have loved to go through the shelves, but his voice betrayed his misery as it echoed in the room.

A movement caught his eye and he saw Yeeun standing in the doorway, a slight frown on her face. She came into the room and leaned against one of the desks.

“He’s your friend?” she asked.

Jaebum rubbed his fingers into his eye sockets and tried to breathe even though his chest felt like it was collapsing inwards. “He’s my best friend.”

Yeeun didn’t say anything. Right now, Jinyoung would be sitting in the same second-floor room of the building where Jaebum had himself been taken two years ago. He imagined Jinyoung’s parents, worry-stricken, coming into the room and trying not to cry. His four sisters giving him endless lists of useless advice. He imagined his own parents coming into that room, silent. His mother had run her fingers through his hair. His father had said only, “Be strong,” and then two tears had slipped down each of his cheeks. It was the only time Jaebum ever saw his father cry. It was also the last time he saw them alive.

“The girl is pretty,” Yeeun said, her voice thin but determined. He appreciated this about Yeeun, her resolve. “She looks like she comes from central, though, so she’s probably never lifted an axe in her life.”

“She might surprise us,” Jaebum said. But he didn’t mean it. The girl had burst into tears as soon as the doors of the Justice Building slammed shut behind them.

“And your friend?”

“He’s strong enough.” Jaebum felt sick to his stomach. “Bad aim with a bow, though. The main thing is that he’s smart.”

Yeeun won the 29th Hunger Games by playing the odd desert landscape like a chess game, working the landscape for tactical advantages and manipulating the other tributes to get supplies. So he thought he saw approval in her eyes, when he said that Jinyoung was smart. But of course, the end of the 29th Hunger Games was a brutal and weaponless battle. Jaebum never managed to erase from his memory the image of Yeeun bludgeoning her last remaining adversary to death with a rock. The tears streaming down her face as it happened.

“If we bring one of them home, it’ll probably be him,” Yeeun said. She turned slightly, the light from the window catching her face in profile. “He has a better chance. I’ll focus on doing what I can for her, and you bring him back alive.”

Suddenly the room was full of ghosts. The forty-six tributes who died while the two of them were still alive. Last year’s tributes from District 7, two twelve-year-olds. Jaebum’s parents. There was no escaping them, Jaebum knew, but at least he could try to bring Jinyoung back alive. He could stand being haunted if Jinyoung stayed alive.

 

* * *

 

 

On camera, Otho spoke in a painful falsetto, emphasizing the weird accent of the Capitol with that hissing _s_ and staccato intonations. But in private, his voice was naturally deep and his demeanor serious. Jaebum liked him, in the tentative way one liked a man who supervised the organized death of children from District 7. Otho was, in spite of everything else, deeply invested in keeping his tributes alive.

“Play up her innocence,” Otho said to Yeeun as their train glided smoothly through the forest. “She has a look that’s popular in some parts of the Capitol these days. They’re following a ‘fair maiden’ trend. Her lack of confidence might win her sponsors.”

Jaebum stabbed his fork into one of the steaks spread on the table in front of him. Otho gave him a disapproving look, but Jaebum didn’t care. He ate the steak right off the fork, just to prove his point.

“Even if the whole Capitol sponsors her, it won’t matter if the arena has no place to hide,” Yeeun mused, taking notes on a pad of paper and absently chewing at a piece of bread. She spoke in a practiced way, with the voice of someone who knew that every year she bore some responsibility for at least one child’s death, usually two. When Jaebum was in the games, she’d gotten half the city on his side. It occurred to him now that he’d never thanked her, but then, it was a twisted kind of thank you.

“Don’t worry about that yet,” Otho said, and turned to Jaebum. But he stopped speaking when the tributes walked in. Jinyoung had his arm around Dahyun’s shoulders. Probably trying to comfort her. That was a bad sign.

They both said “hello” and then sat down. Dahyun immediately began to pile up her plate. Even though Jaebum had toured all the districts and knew that by the majority standard, District 7 was well-fed, they still never saw food like this. Jinyoung, though, sat glaring at the food.

“You need to eat,” Jaebum said gruffly. “Fatten up now.”

“For the slaughter?” Jinyoung asked. He met Jaebum’s eyes. Jinyoung had a look now—a look in his eyes like he was being hunted, like time was ticking downwards. It felt like a hard kick to Jaebum’s stomach.

“You’re friends?” Otho asked, his monotone voice inscrutable.

“Best friends,” Jinyoung answered. He reached for a hunk of bread and gave Otho a smile that could have meant a thousand different things. “I’m the reason Jaebum hasn’t drunk himself to death.”

Otho considered this in silence for a long moment while Jaebum watched Jinyoung. He could bring Jinyoung back alive, he was almost certain. It would happen at Dahyun’s expense, but that was also at the expense of twenty-two other tributes, and Jaebum knew that the first rule of surviving the Hunger Games was to shove guilt down into a small box at the base of your throat and force yourself to keep it closed.

“Star-crossed lovers,” Otho said finally, this time to Jaebum. “It’d be a good angle to play when you’re finding him sponsors.”

“Oh, we’re not—” Jaebum said quickly.

“What does the truth matter in the Capitol?” Otho asked. He smiled, revealing two rows of electric blue teeth. “The point is to build intrigue.”

Jaebum felt his ears grow warm and he pointedly avoided Jinyoung’s gaze. He couldn’t imagine trying to convince Capitol sponsors that he and Jinyoung were some sort of ill-fated lovers. His stomach suddenly felt queasy.

“It might work.” Yeeun leaned around Otho. “Playing him up as smart and charming should work well enough, but it would be better to give sponsors a reason to want him to stay alive.” She closed her mouth and her expression changed, like she was debating on whether or not she should say something. “Of course,” she said carefully, “That might mean they—market you as a package deal, afterward.”

Jaebum could feel Jinyoung’s eyes on him. He wondered how much of this conversation Jinyoung could tease out, Jinyoung who had never been to the Capitol. Jinyoung who was primed for a good, long life in District 7. He could have moved down to central, worked in planning and development, but he’d stayed in their northern logging town for Jaebum and his family. And, more than likely, his books.

Jaebum sighed. “You’re right,” he said, mostly to his plate. “It’s a good angle. We can use it.”

“Two handsome boys from the logging district,” Otho said slowly, his blue smile in Jaebum’s peripheral vision. “This is the kind of thing the Capitol lives for.”

 

* * *

 

 

As the train hurtled through the night, Jinyoung slipped into Jaebum’s room. For a moment, he was just a silhouette in the doorway, another ghost following Jaebum into his dreams. Then he closed the door and his face came into focus. He looked like he was teetering on the sharp edge between angry and terrified, and Jaebum knew from experience that anger always felt like the better of the two options.

“So,” Jinyoung said, folding his arms over his chest. “You going to tell me what all that was about?”

Jaebum saw Jinyoung with new eyes. Jinyoung would look good on camera, his face beloved across Panem. He’d figure out the right things to say at the right times. Of course, none of that mattered if he couldn’t manage to stay alive.

“You’re in the Hunger Games.” Jaebum laughed lightly even though nothing was funny. “That’s your answer.”

“So you’re just going to,” Jinyoung waved his hand around in the air while he searched for words. “I don’t know—pretend you’re in love with me so that people will spend money on me? Did I get that right?”

Jaebum stood up from the bed. “I’m going to keep you alive,” he said with gritted teeth. He moved to look out the window instead. In the dark, all he could see was the stars overhead, and the shadow of the train.

“So you’re just one of them now?” Jinyoung laughed behind him. “Lying, manipulating, treating the death of a bunch of kids like some big show—”

Jaebum turned around and bolted across the room. He grabbed Jinyoung by the shoulders and shoved him against the wall. Fury built like fire in his chest.

“Everywhere I look,” he breathed, “I see the ghosts of the twenty-three people who died instead of me. I see my parents. And I see those two kids from last year. So don’t you _dare_ act like you’re better than me.” He shoved Jinyoung’s shoulders against the wall again, for good measure, and then released him.

Jinyoung rubbed a hand against one of his shoulders, and Jaebum half-hoped he’d pick a fight. But instead, Jinyoung sat down on the bed and looked up at him. The anger in his eyes had vanished.

“Sorry,” Jinyoung said. “It’s just—I remember watching you, two years ago. When you were in the Capitol, you were like someone else entirely. And then in the games…”

He trailed off and Jaebum sat down next to him. Outside the window, the stars shone fiercely. In his games the stars had been obscured by whatever mechanism they used to create the arena, and that had been more terrifying than the certainty of his impending death: looking up and seeing no stars.

“You do what you have to do to survive,” Jaebum said. He could feel Jinyoung looking at him, but he didn’t want to look up.

“Including this ‘star-crossed lovers’ thing?” Jinyoung questioned, his tone light, like he was teasing. Jaebum stared hard at the floor.

“I never told you how my parents died,” he said to the floor.

The train entered a tunnel and for a moment, the room was nearly dark.

“They died from the white flu,” Jinyoung said.

The train exited the tunnel and the room was flooded with moonlight again.

“No.” Jaebum took a shaky breath and grasped his hands together. “After—after. I had that tour around Panem. And I was a little rebellious. I wouldn’t say certain things, or I’d make up my own speeches at the last minute. Stupid shit just to piss people off.” He shook his head. “No. Not to piss people off. I just couldn’t—I just. Couldn’t.”

He had few memories of that tour. Images appeared in his mind in brief flashes. A silent crowd in District 11. It rained in District 12 and everything was covered in a fine layer of coal dust. In District 4 he refused to speak at all. In District 1 he said something inappropriate—he couldn’t remember anymore. In District 8 he broke down in tears. In District 2 he got very drunk and asked how it felt to be Capitol lapdogs.

“I didn’t know it,” he continued, still staring at the floor, “But I’d gotten myself in a lot of trouble already. The only thing worse than a victor who’s lost his mind, is a victor who’s angry at the Capitol. They see that and they’ll break you. They broke Yeeun. They broke me.”

At that, the box of guilt at the base of his throat threatened to break open and Jaebum stopped speaking. He stared hard at the floor, refusing to cry. He felt Jinyoung press his palm against his back, a reassuring gesture, but it felt like it was happening somewhere far away and Jaebum was locked deep inside himself.

“When I got back to the Capitol, they informed me that I was going to be the main event at some party a rich couple was throwing. I don’t remember who anymore. I told them that I’d already killed for the Capitol and I refused to let the Capitol rape me for entertainment, too. President Plack came to see me personally.”

He laughed. Jinyoung’s hand moved to his shoulder, where he gripped too tightly.

“He told me that I could have things my way, but that I’d already upset him and in Panem, all actions have consequences. When I came back home, my parents were dead and President Plack had sent a note. _‘My condolences.’_ ”

Jaebum stood up and looked down at Jinyoung. He could feel his hands shaking, and he could feel all the ghosts in the room watching him, waiting to see what he would do. As if he could ever atone for all the things he’d done. The only thing he could still do was keep Jinyoung alive, and he was going to do it. He had to.

“I didn’t know.” Jinyoung’s voice was soft. His eyes flicked up to meet Jaebum’s. Jaebum immediately looked away.

“I didn’t tell anyone.” Jaebum looked at the shadows of trees blurring by the window, instead of at Jinyoung. “I don’t want people to know that my parents are dead because I was feeling prudish one day.”

“That’s not what happened,” Jinyoung said fiercely. “You know that’s not what happened.”

Jaebum didn’t say anything. He focused on keeping the box closed, keeping the guilt pinned down and away. Not because he didn’t have a reason to feel guilty—he had more guilt haunting him than anyone else. But if he acknowledged it, he wouldn’t be able to go on living at all.

“If I’d known what was going to happen, I would have done anything to keep my parents alive.” He steeled himself and looked hard at Jinyoung, trying to make him see, willing him to understand. “And so would you.”

Jinyoung didn’t say anything. Something flickered in his eyes, recognition maybe, and then he looked away. Jaebum would do whatever it took to bring Jinyoung home. The Capitol could debase him however they wanted—he couldn’t go home without Jinyoung. He’d drown in his memories if he were alone.

“I need to check on Dahyun,” Jinyoung said. He stood up, his shoulders squared, and Jaebum saw that Jinyoung was a stronger person than he’d ever been. The trouble with strong people, though, was that they usually died early in the arena.

“It’s no use,” Jaebum said. “It’ll just make things harder later, if you’re taking care of her now.”

Jinyoung ignored him. He stood for just a moment, shifting his weight on his feet like he couldn’t quite make up his mind. Jaebum wanted to say so much more—he didn’t know what. Something to make Jinyoung understand. But then Jinyoung left the room, and Jaebum was alone.

 

* * *

 

 

Jaebum dreamed of the arena.

Most nights, he dreamed of death: the bloody, violent murders he committed with his own hands. Watching the life bleed out of a twelve-year-old boy. Hitting an eighteen-year-old over the head and seeing him fall to his knees and then slump over, his face in the mud. A scuffle between him and a seventeen-year-old girl and when he finally stabbed her, she died on top of him. The knowledge that none of them were ever laid to rest and their ghosts roamed the earth, searching. Desperate.

But as the train hurtled toward the Capitol, he did not dream of the gruesome ways twenty-three other people died instead of him.

Instead, he dreamed of the avalanche. He’d been one of the few who recognized the avalanche coming, and did not die as it flattened out the landscape of the arena. For at least three days he hid in a cave, terrified of the man-made snow and its man-made consequences, his eyes flicking up toward the beady eye of the camera that followed him everywhere and wondering if the people watching realized how it felt, to be running away from death.

A girl from District 11 found his cave on the second day. She was about fourteen, too thin, with a large gash across her face and blood seeping through her coat. She staggered into the cave and looked at him with solemn eyes, as if to say, _Kill me if you want. I do not fear death._

They shared the cave for the next day and a half. Not speaking. He helped her tend to her wounds, out of some kind of survival instinct. She shared the food she’d received from a parachute floating down from the artificial sky. In another life, they might have been friends.

Jaebum dreamed of her solemn brown eyes. He dreamed she told him, _I am not afraid to die._

He woke up trying to remember her name.

 

* * *

 

 

They arrived in the Capitol at dawn. Jaebum stayed inside the train while Jinyoung and Dahyun were pushed out onto the open-aired section at the back, instructed by Otho to wave and flash “winning” smiles at the gathered crowds. He noted how quickly Jinyoung adjusted to the situation—he straightened up and squared his shoulders, lifting his arm to wave. Although Jaebum couldn’t see his face, he could imagine the crinkled-up eyes and bright smile put on display for the cameras whirring in the air beside the train.

Once inside the training center, Jinyoung was whisked away by District 7’s teenage prodigy stylist Bambam, who teetered on tall shoes that looked like horse hooves and seemed utterly delighted by Jinyoung’s appearance. “Why couldn’t I have worked with him my first year, instead of you?” Bambam asked Jaebum, and Jaebum couldn’t discern if he was teasing or not. Then Jinyoung had disappeared behind layers of doors. And Jaebum had work to do.

As a victor, he was free to walk around the Capitol so long as he was escorted by several Peacekeepers assigned to the task. The city made him sick. Tall buildings stretched into the sky, architecture Jaebum couldn’t fathom. The people of the Capitol fawned over him, and walking out into the streets was always a bit risky—as a fairly recent victor, his fans were still numerous and the opulence of the city meant they had little to do, so they would sit around outside the training center, waiting for him to appear.

But the worst part of the Capitol to him was that it had been scrubbed clean of the haunted world, its ties to whatever lay beyond severed cleanly and completely. It seemed to him that there was no death in the Capitol, save for the savagery of the Hunger Games, which they consumed as entertainment. He suspected that when someone came close to death, they were simply taken away. He wouldn’t be surprised if their families went on as if the dead relative had never existed: no funeral rites, no way to assure the passage of their ghosts, only the complete denial that life ever came to an end. The party in the Capitol went on indefinitely. Maybe this was why the average person in the Capitol not only endured but celebrated the Hunger Games. Death, for them, was not real.

 

* * *

 

 

He passed through the city as quietly as possible. The building he needed was several blocks away, but the sleek, fast trains that ran under and above ground through the city intimidated him, so he walked. He passed under a few screen displays of himself as he went, giant reminders of his victory two years ago. He didn’t even look like himself in the images. Most of the screens, though, showed the pictures of this year’s twenty-four tributes. The Reapings were on constant loop. Jaebum stopped in a crowd for just a moment and looked up at a giant screen to watch a young boy from District 5 faint on the stage of the Justice Building in his district. The Capitol crowd laughed. “He’ll go quickly,” someone said next to Jaebum.

One of the Peacekeepers jostled Jaebum’s shoulder. He had to keep moving.

Jaebum finally reached the opulent amphitheater where previous victors were meeting with the wealthiest sponsors in the Capitol. It had the appearance of being open-air, but was enclosed with a digital screen programmed to reflect whatever vision of the sky its occupants had in mind. Today, when Jaebum entered, he was met with a vision of tall pines and a clear blue sky. He took several deep breaths and promised himself he wouldn’t punch anything.

“Jaebum Im, you look ruggedly dashing,” called a woman with pink hair so long it trailed the floor. The group gathered around her turned and smiled, and Jaebum forced himself to smile in return. It was all for Jinyoung, he reminded himself. Anything to bring Jinyoung home.

Several hours later, he’d sealed a number of sponsors, mostly women who were taken with the “handsome fellow from the logging district.”

“He is handsome, isn’t he?” Jaebum would say every time, feeling bile build in his throat. “He’s my best friend. We’ve known each other since we were children. And I just can’t imagine—” Then he’d stop speaking and let them mistake his need to vomit for tears. It was beautifully effective, though. They sighed and patted Jaebum’s arm and signed the contracts for sponsorship. Otho Grenache was a genius at his job.

When the artificial sky finally showed a sun in the perfect center, the Capitol sponsors wordlessly dissipated for what was most likely a drug-induced nap, since the festivities opening the Hunger Games would drag on all night. All that was left in the amphitheater were thirty or so victors, looking somehow small and lost in the sunlight.

“Jaebum, my man,” someone called out.

Jaebum watched Jackson Wang, victor of the 33rd Hunger Games from District 4, jump down several steps with a bright grin on his face.

“Nasty shit, isn’t it?” Jackson asked, clapping Jaebum on the shoulder. “I think we need a drink.”

 

* * *

 

 

Jackson took him down several side streets to a bar tucked between a row of small businesses. Officially—at least in District 7—they were too young to drink, but Jaebum couldn’t imagine any Capitol citizen setting aside the prestige of having victors at their bar for some rule that might not exist in the Capitol anyway. The moment they walked in, they were greeted with a chorus of voices, people Jackson had apparently befriended in the past five years. Jaebum let everything wash over him. When he finally had a drink in his hands, the alcohol worked quickly, leaving him numb.

“I overheard you talking to the Cherry sisters,” Jackson said.

“Who?” Jaebum asked vaguely.

“Never mind.” Jackson waved a hand in front of his face. Jaebum called for another shot of the hard stuff the bartender had been serving him. At least the Capitol was good for something. “What I want to know,” Jackson continued, “Is if you’re _really_ lying. That guy from your district, is he really your friend?”

Jaebum looked into the dark liquid in his glass. The world felt very far away from him. He hated the silence of the Capitol. It seemed to him they were trying to drown out their ghostless city with a constant stream of noise. But it wouldn’t make a difference. So much blood was on their hands.

“He’s my best friend,” Jaebum said. The words felt odd and rehearsed. Jackson might repeat anything Jaebum told him—but let him repeat it. Whatever brought Jinyoung home. “If he dies—” Jaebum began. The glass shook in his hand. As if he were very far away from himself, he watched it slip out of his grasp, and shatter on the floor.

 

* * *

 

 

For the opening ceremonies, Jinyoung was dressed in something green and shining. Jaebum couldn’t remember—he watched the way the cameras caught Jinyoung’s eyes, the hard determination and beneath that, a tide of something Jaebum thought was sorrow. Jaebum let his eyes drop to the floor and the sound of the crowd washed over him, piped in through speakers and echoing into the building from the outside. He remembered being in those chariots, paraded around the arena. He wanted to run away, but there was nowhere to go.

 

* * *

 

 

He sought out Jinyoung’s room that night, when everyone else had gone to bed but the Capitol festivities still echoed on in the distance. There were infinite reasons to feel unsettled and on edge in the Capitol, but as Jaebum walked down the hall an Avox appeared and then disappeared in his peripheral vision. They were the approximate equivalent of the Capitol’s ghosts, only they couldn’t slip away from this world to the next. Another reason to despise the Capitol.

He let himself into Jinyoung’s room and found Jinyoung standing at the far end, staring out of the window. “Is it always like this?” Jinyoung asked. He turned and looked over his shoulder, gesturing to the vibrant city below them.

“Whenever I’ve been here, it’s like this.” Suddenly Jaebum didn’t know why he’d come. Maybe just to see Jinyoung in the flesh, and not on a screen.

“It’s disgusting,” Jinyoung said. “They’re throwing a party for the Hunger Games.”

“It’s the event of the year.” Jaebum didn’t know whether to be sarcastic or serious. The clench in his heart suggested neither was sufficient.

“My grandmother used to weep at every Reaping.” Jinyoung turned and looked back. “Do you remember that?”

“I remember.”

“She said that they should have fought harder. That the children were being punished for their mistakes.”

“I remember.”

“You know why I keep going back to those ruins with the books?” Jinyoung turned fully away from the window now, so that the city’s electric light shone around him, an outline of brightness.

“No, I don’t,” Jaebum said honestly.

“Because I have to know,” Jinyoung said. “There are only maybe fifty that can still be read, and then language has changed so much since whenever they were printed, but you know what they’re about? War, and death, and people fighting each other and trying to be good in spite of everything.”

He walked forward until he was right in front of Jaebum, his brow furrowed.

“Will you promise me something?” he asked. “If I—If I don’t come back, you need to take care of my books.”

Jaebum laughed in spite of himself. Outside the window, fireworks were being shot into the sky, bright brilliant bursts of light that cast Jinyoung in blue and then red and then gold.

“Your books?”

“Wonpil will take care of my family. But someone’s got to make sure those books aren’t lost.” He looked so earnest that all Jaebum could do was shrug his shoulders, thinking to himself that Jinyoung was a strange person, and maybe already a little bit crazy. And he also thought that no matter what, Jinyoung would come back.

Jinyoung put his hands on Jaebum’s shoulders. “If we don’t keep memories of what happened in the past,” he said, his grip too tight, “Then what makes us any different from the people in the Capitol? What stops us from becoming them?”

_A lot of things,_ Jaebum wanted to say. Instead he simply nodded, knowing that this was a vow he would regret. Jinyoung looked more relaxed as soon as Jaebum gave in, the slightest of smiles on his face, like he’d put things in order.

“You should sleep,” Jaebum said.

By some wordless agreement Jinyoung lay down and Jaebum lay down next to him, a few feet between them on this oversized bed, but the comfort of each other’s presence enough for them to relax. Jinyoung fell asleep almost immediately. Jaebum lay awake, watching the fireworks explode in the night sky.

 

* * *

 

 

Jinyoung’s training passed by in a blur. Jaebum spent every day courting Capitol sponsors, smiling until his cheeks ached and his temper was short. Jinyoung was awarded a score following his training session: a 9, impressive enough to turn heads and send sponsors flocking around Jaebum, wanting to put more money on the handsome boy from the logging district. Jaebum was only peripherally aware of Jinyoung’s competition, usually only when Yeeun mentioned something off hand—the tall blonde boy from District 2 who had to have trained secretly for this, the curly haired girl from District 8 who looked ready to set fire to every building she stepped in, the twelve-year-old from District 9 who looked too much like the boy from District 7 who died the year before.

The interviews would be a defining moment. Octavia Goldshire, the perpetual host of the Hunger Games, had dyed her hair lavender and etched a strange pattern into her skin this year. Jaebum took his seat in the crowd and remembered standing up there under the lights, trying to answer Octavia’s questions while the rest of Panem looked on, placing bets on his life.

The interviews took ages, it seemed, to reach District 7. The girl preceded the boy from each district, so Dahyun stepped up first, on shaky high-heeled shoes, her hands visibly trembling. Jaebum looked to his left and saw Yeeun glaring at the stage, a hard set to her jaw.

“Don’t you look lovely,” Octavia gasped. Dahyun gave her best attempt at a smile. “I’ve never seen such a vision,” Octavia gushed.

“I’ve never seen a dress this pretty,” Dahyun said in a small, shy voice. The audience let out an overstated “aw” and Yeeun heaved a sigh of relief.

Jaebum stopped listening until Jinyoung took the stage. He let his mind wander, trying to think of everything and nothing at once. Eventually applause erupted and Jaebum was drawn back to the present, watching Jinyoung stand under those burning spotlights.

“And here is the handsome fellow everyone’s been gushing about,” Octavia crooned.

“I’m afraid I’m not nearly handsome enough to stand up here next to you,” Jinyoung returned, with a twinkling smile. Jaebum swore he saw Octavia blush underneath her thick makeup.

“He’s better than you were,” Yeeun whispered as the interview went on. The audience laughed at all the right moments. “He has the best chance.”

“Tell me,” Octavia asked, “What will you miss the most from District 7?”

Jinyoung gave a sad smile and covered his mouth briefly with the back of his hand. Jaebum couldn’t discern if the gesture was real or rehearsed.

“The people I’m leaving behind,” Jinyoung said. The crowd let out a collective sigh of sorrow. Jaebum took a shaky breath.

 

* * *

 

 

A little less than two years ago, when Jaebum returned to District 7 after his tour of Panem, he’d learned his parents were dead and then shut himself up in his house in the Victor’s Village and drunk himself into a stupor. When the alcohol wore off, he located more. He had little thought of what went on outside his front door, and when he did, it was only to remember the horrors that lay in the past, but haunted the present.

Jinyoung came knocking after a week, and Jaebum yelled at him to go away. He came back the next day and picked the lock. Jaebum threw a vase at his head and it shattered on the wall behind him. Jinyoung came back the next day and left food on Jaebum’s kitchen counter. And so on, until after a few weeks Jinyoung came in and found Jaebum curled up on the floor of his bedroom, sobbing with inexpressible agony. Jinyoung stayed with him for the next two weeks.

It was only later, when Jaebum was sober and mostly functional, that he understood what Jinyoung had done for him. How he deserved to be abandoned rather than cared for. He tried to say as much, when Jinyoung came by with dinner.

“Don’t,” Jinyoung commanded. Nothing else was said on the topic.

The next day, they went out into the woods and built small graves for the dead. The twenty-three tributes who died instead of him. His parents. For the first time, standing under the dome of a bright blue sky, with Jinyoung next to him, Jaebum thought he might remember what it was to be alive.

 

* * *

 

 

The night before the games, Jinyoung came into Jaebum’s room. “I have to talk to you,” he said. He sounded scared, and a scared Jinyoung was worse than Jaebum realized it could be. He sat up and turned on the light.

“You promised you’d take care of my books,” Jinyoung began.

“I’ll take care of your stupid books, yes,” Jaebum answered. He felt exhausted all the way into his bones and the party was still droning on outside. Spotlights flashed in the sky outside the window, but Jaebum had been too tired to close the curtains.

“Okay, good,” Jinyoung said. “Because I’m going to make it so that Dahyun wins.”

Jaebum felt like he’d been plunged into cold water. For a long moment he didn’t know what to say, and stared at Jinyoung’s determined face, feeling numb.

“Are you out of your mind?” he finally managed, his voice more shaky than spiteful.

“I’ve made up my mind,” Jinyoung announced. “She’s innocent and she deserves to go home—”

“So are you!” Jaebum was suddenly, electrically alive. He got out of his bed and stared at Jinyoung in shock. “ _You_ deserve to go home—”

“It’s unfair, them making her fight—”

“It’s all fucking unfair!” Jaebum ran his hands back through his hair in frustration. “They’re making you and her fight to the death, just like they make twenty-four kids do every year for the last thirty-seven years, and it’s always fucking unfair, and there’s nothing we can do about it!”

He felt helpless, drowning under the weight of the Capitol’s power and the memories of the games and the righteous gleam in Jinyoung’s eyes.

“You haven’t even given her one thought since we got here, have you?” Jinyoung asked, his voice rising. “She’s terrified, and yeah, I’m terrified too, but at the very least I can protect her and _maybe_ people seeing that happen will get that it’s depraved to put us in these ‘games’ and celebrate while we kill each other—”

“You’re an idiot,” Jaebum said gruffly. “You’ll both get picked off in the first hour like that.”

“Well, what if I don’t. Maybe then people see—”

“Congratulations, you got to play hero for a day.” Jaebum wanted to shake Jinyoung hard until he woke up from his delusions of heroics. “ The moment you’re dead, she will be too. And everyone in Panem will forget about you, because Panem doesn’t remember anyone except the person who wins.”

Jinyoung’s expression grew hard. The air between them seemed to chill. Jaebum, who had been sick since the Reaping, suddenly felt more ill than before. Everything was off-kilter now, spinning out of his grasp.

Jinyoung took a step backwards, like he wanted to get away from Jaebum. “At least I will have done the right thing.”

“You’ll be dead.”

“Or I’m not, and I succeed, and Dahyun gets to go home—”

“And what?” Jaebum cried out. “Go home? Go home after going through that? You think there’s a happy ending to this? We’re called victors but we’re really just survivors, and you _know_ that—you know what I’ve been through because you watched it happen. You watched me murder people on screen. And you know what?”

Jaebum stepped forward and grabbed Jinyoung’s shoulders, because he _had_ to see all that he was refusing to acknowledge. He had to know. He had to change his mind.

Jaebum grasped Jinyoung’s shoulders so hard Jinyoung winced. " _Everyone_ dies in that arena,” Jaebum told him. “You’re never the same. You’ll never forget what happened. Just because you walk out of the arena, doesn’t mean you walk out alive.”

Jinyoung grew quiet. Jaebum wanted him to understand, wanted to explain better—he wasn’t cruel; it was more merciful to spare the girl the violence and suffering at the end of the games, to carry on himself, to come home. He wanted to explain that Jinyoung would be irreparably scarred, too—but Jaebum was already half a person after winning the Hunger Games and maybe together, the two of them could go on living. But without Jinyoung, Jaebum didn’t see how he could.

“I’m sorry,” Jinyoung said in a low voice. “I have to do what I think is right.”

Jaebum’s hands slid away. Jinyoung left the room without saying anything else. Jaebum watched his back disappear out the door, and then the metal door slide into place behind him. Then he sat down in the floor and wrapped his arms around his knees. The box of guilt at the base of his throat broke open and he let out one rough and searing sob, and then stopped. Jinyoung would be lost over one moment of virtue that didn’t make a difference in the tide of the avalanche that rolled down on them, that had been there since before they were born and stretched far into the future, reducing them all to ghosts trapped under the snow.

 

* * *

 

 

He saw Jinyoung one last time before the games began. Jinyoung hugged him tightly and Jaebum stood very still, afraid that the moment was fragile, knowing it would end too soon. Neither of them spoke. And then Jinyoung was gone.

Jaebum looked at Yeeun, who watched the door Jinyoung and Dahyun had disappeared through, a frown on her face.

“If he dies,” Jaebum said under his breath, “I’m going to go live in the woods for the rest of my life.”

Yeeun looked up, startled. Jaebum smiled a little, like he was teasing, but Yeeun didn’t return her own. Everyone in District 7 knew that living alone in the woods was a death sentence. No one who got lost in the woods alone returned.

“Then let’s make sure he comes back alive,” Yeeun said. She put a hand on Jaebum’s arm, as if to comfort him.

Together, they turned with the rest of Panem to look at the screen above them and see who would become the victor of the 37th Hunger Games.

 

* * *

 

 

_Jaebum is thirteen years old. He is lost in an endless forest, and every way he turns he sees only more trees covering unfamiliar terrain. The wind whispers between the trees as if to forewarn or promise their imminent death. His only companion is another thirteen year old boy he’s always hated, but now sticks close to, afraid to let him out of his sight._

_They make camp in some ruins they find along a hillside, old concrete foundations that reek of ghosts. But the coyotes are howling in the distance, and a light rain has started falling. Jinyoung finds a structure with a roof and three intact walls and a fourth only mostly crumbled. Jaebum builds a fire. They sit, shivering, and watch as the rain starts to pour outside._

_“I don’t want to die,” Jaebum whispers. He half-hopes that his voice gets drowned out by the rain, and half-hopes that Jinyoung hears._

_Jinyoung, to his surprise, reaches out and grips his hand. “You’re not going to die,” Jinyoung says firmly, like he believes it. His hand is cold and clammy but his grip is strong. “I’m going to keep you alive. And you’re going to keep me alive.”_

_It’s not a negotiation. Jaebum stares into Jinyoung’s cold and determined eyes, and he feels like his chest suddenly expands with some kind of warm and unfamiliar certainty. It takes him a long moment to recognize the feeling as hope._

_“Okay,” Jaebum says. “I’ll hold you to that.”_

* * *

 

_end._


End file.
